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Fear Of Loss

by Mike Jezek

Human beings have a greater fear of loss than of gain. So today you're going to learn how to capitalize on that in a fresh and unique way.

We all know that not everyone will buy no matter how excited they are about your offer or how much they believe you.

Why? Aside from dozens of mental ideologies, stereotypes and beliefs running in the background of his mind, your prospect may believe that there is a consequence to ordering that's greater than his need to acquire your product or service.

And that's exactly where "fear of loss" comes in.

You need to show Mr. Prospect how he stands to be penalized by not acting on your offer.

Ok, I know what you're thinking. That I'm going to tell you to say to your prospects that you're running a limited time offer; that prices are soon to rise up; that you only have X amount of these products left and that they're flying off the shelf (Many marketers use this unethically. Always be honest in your marketing. Only use the abovementioned when it's true).

No, I'm going to go further than that. To my knowledge what you're about to learn from me—you won't find it put this succinctly elsewhere.

Here it is...

You need to include in your sales copy and marketing campaigns what can potentially happen if Mr. Prospect got wishy-washy and didn't buy.

You do this by stating the following:

1) How his problem will continue to trouble him.

2) How his problem may get worse and fester out of control.

3) How his competitors will rise above him and make him the bottom rung of the ladder.

4) How people will look down on him.

Now obviously, this requires some adroit maneuvering to safely work this penalty strategy.

Instead of outright telling him how life will get worse, you can also do it in a smoother manner such as the following:

"Learn why our company's clients go on to make millions of dollars while those who don't know our proprietary strategies become unknown businesses—many of them go bankrupt."

"We've observed that patients who used our X see rapid healing in as little as 5 days. While those who didn't use our X, saw their X fester out of control."

"By getting immediate attention, 95% of our patients saw relief in 48 hours. Some people who declined this treatment saw their X get worse and later came back to us asking us to help them. But by then their problem had spiraled so far out of control that there was little that we could do to help."

"We've found that those who use our X achieved X results. While those who didn't purchase our X discovered quickly how outdated their X was."

Here's another way to subtly infuse the penalty strategy into your marketing:

"Picture yourself 5 years from now—you never bought our X, what happened to your problem?"

"Fast forward your life to 2 years from now. If you made the decision not to buy our X, what will have happened to your company while your competitors bought our X?"

As you'll notice, the 2 examples above are forms of future pacing.

By now, I'm sure these sales copy examples are sparking some ideas for you. Please note, that in the sales copy section where you're stating the penalty, you can add graphic elements to stir up that penalty of not buying.

For example, if you're a sales training firm, you can show a picture of a "For Sale" sign on the front door of a business.

You could also show a bar graphic displaying how the arrow took a nose dive because Mr. Prospect didn't buy.

Are you beginning to get the picture here? If you are, you now have some powerful selling dynamite with which to work with. People inherently try to move away from pain to where they perceive comfort.

This penalty strategy is used all the time in politics. For example. When one political candidate is far behind in the polls— key strategy is to start scaring voters into thinking that the other candidate is a sinister, evil person, who's out to wreck whatever it is that they care about.

The candidate trailing in the pools starts throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the candidate doing well in the polls in an effort to get people to second guess their commitment to him or her.

This strategy works remarkably well. True, many surveys say people hate this kind of political advertising, yet it works.

If I can get you to second guess your decision to not buy, I at least created some extra room for myself wherein I can get you to invest more time into listening to why you should by from me. So experiment with this idea as well in your sales letters and marketing.

Mike Jezek is Sales Letter Psychologist and the creator of Mega-Persuasion Psychology, the science behind "Irresistible Copywriting" which employs a powerful combination of results-producing influence techniques and psychologically persuasive sales devices—proven to increase Web SALES by 30% to 400% or more!

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